Feeding the Beast
by islandKate763
Summary: The Doctor meets a woman whose every fear becomes reality. Will the Doctor be able to save Karen (and the rest of the universe) from herself? A good old-fashioned Doctor Who adventure story with some humor and absolutely no romance (well, mostly, because aren't we all a little in love with the Doctor?)


Author's Note: This is my first attempt at writing fanfic for Doctor Who. Just a lark to help pass the time as I am home on short-term disability. Doctor Who and all recognizable characters/terminology of the story belong to the BBC and not me.

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Karen sat on the bench, looking out over the peaceful grey-blue waters of the bay, feeling as though her insides had been scooped out leaving an infinite void behind that would never be filled. It sucked, but it was better than the forgetting. There was something infinitely worse about those precious few minutes where she forgot what happened. Usually it snuck up on her, catching her unawares while doing the dishes, or a crossword, or changing the oil in her car. Those stolen moments where she felt normal and whole again, until the realization came crashing down upon her once more, the pain crippling in its intensity, as if it had doubled in its absence. The weight of her grief and guilt was claustrophobic. She was trapped, in a prison of her own making. If only she could escape...

At that moment, her solitary reflections were interrupted by a sort of whirring-buzzing. She looked up just in time to see a large turquoise creature race past her bench, with what she could only describe as tentacles flailing. Quick on its heels (did it have heels?) followed a skinny man in a brown pinstriped suit and ridiculously long jacket, which flapped behind him like a blighted falcon. "Come back here with my screwdriver, you saucy cephalopod!" He cried in a cheeky British accent, followed by what she thought was him muttering, "Must this happen every time?"

She had scarcely begun to make sense of the scene when suddenly here the man came again, this time running in the opposite direction, the creature now chasing him. "Well how was I to know she was your mother?!" He yelled over his shoulder.

Almost instinctively, for reasons she didn't quite understand, she stuck out her foot as the creature approached, causing it to stumble and fall flat on its face onto the gravel at her feet. Her eyes widened as the creature immediately dissolved in front of her, turning into a puddle of viscous blue-green goop. What the hell had just happened?

"You just saved the world, well done you."

Startled, she looked up and saw the man in the pinstripe suit leaning against the back of the bench, one leg casually crossed in front of the other. He crouched down and reached his hand into the puddle, deeper than she thought possible. After a bit of searching, mouth agape and tongue touching his upper palate, he withdrew a long, thin metal object, dripping with slime. "Oh lovely. What has he done to you?" His lips formed a slight pout. He flicked the slime off, splashing her shoes in the process, accompanied by an absent-minded, "Sorry!"

He pressed something and the tip of the object glowed blue and began to emit the whirring-buzzing noise that had preceded this whole escapade. "Ah, there! Still works!" He smiled delightedly, revealing dimples in each cheek.

She had been staring at the scene in mute astonishment, but finally found her voice. "What.. Who.. What?!" Ok, not a coherent voice, but a voice nonetheless.

The man nodded his chin at the puddle. "A Polpofrax from the planet Celaria. Lucky shot you made. Their delimiting field, which allows them corporeal form in Earth's atmosphere, is located on the tip of their nose — bit of a design flaw really — when you tripped him, bang! Sidewalk to the face and hello Blobby."

Aliens. In California. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. That Christmas day invasion in London. The Battle of Canary Wharf. She just didn't ever think to expect them so close to home. They seemed to be content with only attacking that tiny little island. "Is it dead?"

"Nah! I'll scoop him up and take him home." He popped his "p"'s dramatically. "He'll be right as rain once he's back in the Celarian waters."

She stared at him. "Who _are_ you?"

"Oh! Sorry! I'm the Doctor. Hello." He grinned widely and held out his hand. "And definitely alien."

"Karen, Karen Miller." She shook his hand and discovered too late it was still covered in the slime of the Polpofrax. Grimacing, she shook her hand, flinging strings of goop. Her mouth dropped open as the separate strands were drawn into the puddle, as if magnetized.

"Pleasure to meet you, Karen Miller." Her eyes jumped back to the Doctor's face. He didn't look like an alien. At least not compared to the puddle of goo on the ground. Though the sideburns _did_ appear a little too perfect to be human.

At their feet there was a sort of popping noise. She looked down and saw the puddle was beginning to bubble.

"He's diffusing! Quick! Pop him into this." He tossed her a clear canister, capped in gold, from his coat pocket. It was etched with circular markings that looked like star charts. "We've got to get him home before his cellular matrix dissolves and he evanesces into the atmosphere!" He turned and ran towards a bright blue shed, labeled "Police Box", at the edge of the path. Strange, she had never noticed it before, though this was her favorite running trail. He disappeared inside, the doors clanging shut behind him. Curiouser and curiouser.

She looked down at the puddle of Polpofrax which was now percolating alarmingly. Opening the canister, she knelt down. How was she supposed to put a puddle in a jar? It denied the laws of physics. And yet, as she ran the container through the puddle, the liquid seemed to ooze into it of it's own accord, each drop following the last until the whole slimy mess was sloshing inside gelatinously. She stood up and screwed the top back on. Turning the canister over in her hands, she couldn't believe the whole thing had fit in there. It had seemed so much larger on the ground. She reached the door of the police box. What could he be doing in there? It was going to be a tight squeeze regardless.

Her breath caught as she opened the door, as instead of squishing into a tiny police box, she found herself in an enormous room, oxidized like an old penny, glowing green and gold. Around the room stood twisty beams, like a double helix missing most of it's rungs, stretching from floor to a very, very high ceiling. A round console dominated the middle of the room, covered in what appeared to be debris one would find at a junkyard - a telephone receiver, an assortment of hoses, buttons, and switches, even a rubber mallet hanging off the edge from a bit of string.

"It's..it's…"

"Bigger on the inside, I know, I know. Hurry up and bring me Blobby!" the Doctor cried, his eyes wide as he ushered her in. She crossed the room quickly and handed him the canister. He placed it in a niche on the top of the console and then began rushing around, pressing buttons and pushing levers, at one point even hammering at something with the mallet. She stumbled backwards toward the door to give him room. She knew she should go, the whole situation was absurd. She'd done her part and it's not like he had asked her to stay, but still, she hesitated at the door. There was something about this strange man, with his wild hair and his cream converse, and his funny blue police box that drew her in.

There was a great heaving and wheezing that seemed to come from all sides. The whole room gave a lurch and she found herself flung against the metal grate floor. Was it an earthquake? She backed up against the wall and tucked her knees into her chest as she waited for the shaking to stop. The Doctor continued his rotation around the console, apparently unperturbed by the commotion.

At length, the noise & shuddering ceased and the Doctor calmly fiddled with a computer screen. "There we are. See?" he flicked the Polpofrax's container, "I told you I'd get you home. Let's go see mummy." He scooped up the canister and turned towards the door. He halted cartoonishly, in mid-stride, when he caught sight of her hunched against his wall.

"What? Oh, hello." He cocked his head, and looked at her, properly looked at her, for the first time since she entered the room. "Are you still here?"

She stumbled to her feet. "Yes, sorry. I didn't mean to stay, but the earthquake…" she trailed off as his eyebrows rose nearly into his hairline.

"The what?"

"Earthquake. All that shaking?"

The Doctor's mouth twitched slightly, he attempted to turn it into a frown almost immediately, but she could tell he was trying not to laugh at her. Her cheeks burned. "I'm sorry, I was just leaving." She quickly pulled the latch on the door and stepped out. Her stomach plummeted and a scream spilled from her mouth as her feet found nothing but air. She felt something grab ahold of her shirt from behind, arresting her downward momentum. Below her was a brilliant teal lagoon, it surface undulating not unlike the Polpofrax had in the canister. Her heart racing in her chest, she looked over her shoulder and saw the Doctor, leaning out of the doorway, holding the doorframe in one hand and her shirt in the other. He had a wry grin on his face.

"Not so fast there, Karen Miller." He heaved her back into the room where she crashed to the floor for the second time in less than ten minutes. Her chest heaved from the rush of adrenaline as she tried to catch her breath.

"What the hell is going on?! Where are we?" she finally wheezed out.

"Well, Celaria, definitely. Probably, oh, I dunno, about a kilometer or two above the capital city of Fraxia?"

"But how did we get here?"

"The TARDIS, of course." The Doctor patted the wall affectionately.

"This box.. It's a spaceship?" The groaning and wheezing and shaking. It was the noise of the ship traveling. This was insane.

"Yup!" He popped that "P" again. "Oh, and time machine!" he added as an aside.

"We've gone back in time?" Her head was spinning.

"Nah. Just a quick little jaunt across the known universe to drop off our friend." He pulled the capsule out of a pocket in his coat and tossed it gently in the air. "Here you are then, Blobby. Home sweet home." He popped the top off and titled it out the open door into the air.

"Wait!" she scrambled to her feet. "Shouldn't we get closer to the ground?" They hadn't come all this way just to turn the Polpofrax into a puddly pancake.

"Oh, he'll be alright. See for yourself."

As he spoke, the Polpofrax slowly oozed from the container. It hung, suspended in mid-air for a moment, and then began a slow, almost graceful, dive down towards the lagoon. As it fell, it rippled and unfurled itself, taking form, beginning with a spade-shaped head and ending in long, flowing tentacular ribbons. She leaned out of the box - the TARDIS - to follow it's descent and saw it splash into the lagoon below. In the blink of an eye, only the surge of water spiraling out in concentric rings was evidence of it's plunge.

She let out a breath she wasn't aware she had been holding. "Magnificent." Her lips stretched into a wide smile and she looked up at the Doctor in delight.

"Neat, huh?" He was sporting such a gleeful grin, she couldn't help but laugh.

"Neat doesn't begin to describe it." She sighed. "Thank you Doctor, for bringing me here, however accidentally. I will never forget it."

He didn't respond, just flashed her another smile, and turned back towards the console. She watched him wiggle some knobs, intently staring at the screen, before he made a satisfied "AH", and then he was off and leaping about, banging the controls as he went. The TARDIS began to wheeze and whoosh. "California, right? I love California. Palm trees, sand, people famous for being famous." He chuckled to himself. "Humans."

"Doctor?" An unsettling thought had just occurred to her.

"Hmmmm?" He turned towards her, eyebrow arched in question.

"How do you know where we are going? There's no window. We could be flying anywhere! How do you avoid crashing into stuff?"

He smiled and knocked on the control desk. "It's all in here, a sort of wibbly-wobbly spacey-wacey control system. Very scientific. The TARDIS never lets me down, always gets me where I want to go— well, where I _need_ to go — well, where she _thinks_ I need to go. Er, never mind!" The TARDIS began emitting a clanging noise and he bounced over to a collection of bright red buttons and pressed them all. "It's quite safe."

One alarm after the other suddenly began ringing throughout the room and the shaking of the TARDIS increased tenfold. The noise was deafening and Karen threw her hands up to her ears in an attempt to muffle the sound.

"What?!" the Doctor flew to the monitor. "What?!" He slammed his hand into the side of it, threw a switch, and then catapulted himself over a railing, disappearing underneath the floor.

Karen stumbled over to see a small staircase she hadn't noticed before. Peering through the rungs, she saw the Doctor pointing his little blue penlight at a bunch of clear tubes coming from the underside of the console.

"What's going on?" she yelled over the noise.

"I don't know! If I could just THINK — there!" The alarms ceased blaring abruptly. He jolted to his feet and ran up the staircase back to the control center. He smashed about the controls, grunting in frustration. The shuddering increased. "Hold on!" he cried.

Karen wrapped her arms around the railing as the TARDIS seemed to drop out of space, taking her stomach with it. It landed with a boom that sent shockwaves reverberating through her body. Her arms shook with the impact but she held on until the room ceased quivering.

"Karen! You alright?"

Trembling, she got to her feet. "Right as rain." She took stock of her extremities, still there, still in one piece. Good. "So, 'quite safe', is it?"

He laughed. "Well, mostly. Come on then! I'm in the mood for an avocado smoothie. Wait, no I'm not, who would ever be in the mood for that?" He practically skipped to the door, completely unfazed by the crashing, alarm-ringing landing. He opened the door and then immediately closed it again. He turned to her with a finger raised in the air. "Ah. So. Remember before how I said the TARDIS always takes me where I need to go?"

"Yes." Her eyes narrowed. "What's wrong. Are we not in California?"

He titled his head, considering. "Well, there is sand…" He pushed the door open wide and despite the wall of heat that came blasting through the doorway, her skin prickled with goosebumps.


End file.
